Green Lantern Corps #28

Well, it took me long enough, but I WAS distracted by Whack a Lantern Week...but I finally got around to doing a review of Green Lantern #28. Written by Peter Tomasi, with the art chores by Luke Ross, this was the second of a two-part story, and it was quite nicely done.

As you may recall from last month's issue, something or someone is going around and instilling fear, by killing off rookie Lantern's relatives. The Lanterns themselves discover this in a particularly horrifying fashion, by having the eyeballs of the aforesaid relatives rain down upon them. You may all recall that this was originally Amon Sur's idea...killing Lantern relatives in order to keep the Sinestro Corps going. Laira offed him for that idea.

Here, we have Kyle, Guy, Salaak and Kilowog all staring a really big jar of eyeballs, and pondering the wisdom of calling in Green Lantern Saarek, who has this rather unnusual ability to communicate with the dead. Guy is trying to crack jokes...mainly because that's his defense mechanism for dealing with bad situations, but as usual, Salaak doesn't get it. Saarek is perfectly willing to help out, and handles their skepticism fairly gracefully. He hops INTO the big jar of eyeballs, and to the disgusted fascination of the rest, all the eyeballs promptly glom onto him, then there is a big FAAASSHHH of light, and we have the picture of the murderer...or murderers, it's not exactly clear.

Nobody recognizes the face, but Salaak has a few ideas, and Kyle, Guy and Kilowog are more than happy to go out and dispense a little payback. In the meantime, the rookies are understandably restless, it is THEIR families that are getting slaughtered after all. Tomar Tu, Brik and some of the other vets are trying to calm them down, but it's starting to get ugly. The rings keep issuing platitudes, and the Guardians are nowhere to be found. Kyle is drawing weird pictures again. Guy goes off to Warriors in order to recharge his ring, and to his annoyance, discovers a pesky guest, who apparently can't read the "closed" sign on the door. He stomps over to the door, throws it open...

...!!!



Oh be still my heart!

Turns out that Tora just couldn't wait the additional two weeks or so until their official date. I'm just glad that she finally came to her sense! It was clever of her to hitch a ride to Oa however. I don't really remember just who the heck Symon Terrynce is, and I'm too lazy to look it up, so I'm just assuming that she went over to the Hall of Justice, and looked up John Stewart and asked for cab service. John checked his ring to find out who was in the neighborhood, and voila! Tora's on Oa!

Guy's just beside himself of course, and tries to feed her. Just then...wouldn't you know it...Salaak interrupts with the news that the murderer's have been sighted or something, and Guy, to his chagrin, has to run off and hunt them down. Tora understands of course.

Off they all go, Guy hunts down one, and she decides to kill herself rather than surrender, which grosses him out a little. Of course she's not the only killer, Kilowog has cornered another one. Kyle, Guy and Kilowog all get together, and with a little more help from Saarek, who questions the dead killer, they find out that they are known as the Quintet. The Lanterns manage to hunt down the remaining three murderers, and take them into custody, locking them up in the sciencells with the usual threats. Guy rushes back to Tora, Kyle and Kilowog decide to go back to Warriors for burgers and beer, while Salaak reassures the rookies that justice has been done. Saarek ends up being summoned by the scarred Guardian for a mysterious errand.

The art was different from Patrick Gleason of course, but I did find something familiar. Look at the last two panels of the scan from above, and compare them to this.



Heh heh. Homage! It works rather well I think,with the circumstances having changed in the meantime.

All in all a nice little story. To be frank, I was just so glad to see Guy and Tora that I didn't even really CARE about the rest of the story, although I do think that Kyle and Kilowog had better be careful when they go into Warriors for their beer.

heh heh.